The general concept of pressure thrust is known in the fluid dynamics design art, to include airfoils, aircraft and submarines. The phenomenon uses energy of the air rushing past an airplane's wing, tail surfaces or fuselage, to push that wing, tail surface or fuselage forwards. The energy required to force the free stream of airflow against the aircraft is less than the energy recovered from the airflow allowing the system to generate a decrease in total energy required.
In the 1940s and 1950s the Griffith Aerofoil was developed. Researchers focused on very thick aerofoils, for use on span-loaded flying-wing transport and they proved a meaningful decrease in total power required for those designs. Fabio Goldschmied with help from Denis Bushnell at NASA uncovered and verified the pressure thrust phenomenon. It is explained in Goldschmied, F. R., “Airfoil Static-Pressure Thrust: Flight-Test Verification,” AIAA Paper 90-3286, September 1990 the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. Additional documentation can be found, for example, in Richards, E. J. and Burge, C. H. “An Airfoil Designed to Give Laminar Flow Over the Whole Surface with Boundary-Layer Suction,” A.R.C. RBM 2263, June 1943; Richards, E. J., Walker W. S. and Greening J. R., “Tests of a Griffith aerofoil in the 13 ft.×9 ft. wind tunnel part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, lift, drag, pitching moments and velocity distribution,” ARC/R&M-2148 ARC-7464 ARC-7561 ARC-8054 ARC-8055, 1944 and Richards, E. J., Walker, W. S. and Taylor, C. R., “Wind-Tunnel Tests on a 30% Suction Wing” A.R.C. RBM 2149, July 1945, “Incompressible Aerodynamics” B. Thwaites, Dover, 1960, http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/BreguetNotes.pdf, as viewed on Dec. 21, 2005, and http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/SPRING/propulsion/UnifiedPropu lsion4/UnifiedPropulsion4.htm, as viewed Dec. 21, 2005, and “Personal Aircraft Drag Reduction,” by Bruce H. Carmichael (Capistrano Beach, Calif.: Carmichael, 1995), the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
Likewise U.S. Pat. No. 5,358,200 entitled “AIRSHIP” and U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,685 entitled “BOUNDARY LAYER CONTROL DIFFUSER FOR A WIND TUNNEL OR THE LIKE” describe related art.
Further, FIG. 1 illustrates an alternative configuration showing a profile and theoretical velocity distribution of an airfoil. Likewise, FIG. 2 illustrates background art showing theoretical and experimental velocity distribution on a symmetrical airfoil with suction.